How is test management done by the test director?

If you are familiar with all the concepts of the test director you can apply them to your software systems or applications since you know how it works.

The test director implements the test management via four major phases as mentioned below:

1. Specification of the requirements
2. Planning the tests
3. Execution of the tests
4. Tracking the defects

Throughout each of the phases the date can be analyzed by the detailed reports and graphs generated earlier. Firstly, you need to analyze your software system or application and determine all of your testing requirements. 

Phase I - specification of Requirements

The first phase of the test director test management process involves the following steps:

1. Examination of the documentation of the software system or application for the determining the testing scope i.e., test goals, strategies, objectives etc.
2. Building of a requirements tree for defining overall testing requirements.
3. Creation of a list of detailed testing requirements for each topic mentioned in the requirements tree.
4. Writing a description for each requirement, assigning a priority level to it and adding attachments if required.
5. Generation of the reports and graphs for providing assistance in the analyzation of the testing requirements.
6. Carrying out a review of the requirements to check if they meet the specifications.

Phase II - Planning the Tests

The second phase involves the following tasks:

1. Examination of the application, testing resources and system requirement for determining the test goals.
2. Division of the application in to modules to be tested and building of a test plan tree to divide the application in to testing units hierarchically.
3. Determination of the type of tests that are required for each module and adding a basic definition of each test to the test plan tree.
4. Linking each test to the corresponding testing requirement.
5. Developing manual tests where each test step describes the test operations and expected outcome. Deciding which tests are to be automated.
6. Creation of the test scripts for the tests that are to be automated using a custom testing tool such as mercury interactive testing tools.
7. Generation of the graphs and reports for the analyzation of the test planning data.
8. Reviewing the tests for determining their suitability to the testing goals.

Phase III - Execution of tests

Third phase involves the following activities:

1. Defining the tests in to groups so as to meet various testing goals of the project. This may involve testing a new version of the application or a specific function in it.
2. Deciding which all tests are to be included in the test set.
3. Scheduling the execution of the tests and assigning tasks to different application testers.
4. Execution of the tests either manually or automatically.
5. Viewing the results of the test runs for determining if a detect was detected in the application under test and generation of the reports and graphs for analyzation of the results.

Phase IV - Tracking the Defects

The last phase of the test management i.e., defect tracking involves the following activities:

1. Submitting new defects detected in the software system or application. Defects can be added during any phase by QA testers, project managers and developers etc.
2. Carrying out a review of the new defects and determining which ones are to be fixed.
3. Correcting the defects that were decided to be fixed.
4. Testing the new build of the software system or application and repeating the whole process until all the defects are fixed.
5. Generation of the graphs and reports to provide assistance in the analyzation of the progress of the defect fixes and determining the date when the application is to be released. 

How do you define and view requirements in Test Director?

Test director is currently available as a plug in or add – on as a support for HP quality center and works like a test management tool. The earlier versions of the test director i.e., version 6 and below worked as stand-alone desk top applications.

However, the next version i.e., the test director 7 was a standalone web application and was known to work on any of the browsers that happened to be supporting active technology. For all the testers world wide it has been easy to integrate with the other mercury interactive tools via test director.

Three facts regarding test director:

1. This tool is not going to work out for the collection of the requirements of a software system or application.
2. It is not an automated testing tool.
3. It cannot be integrated with the products save mercury interactive products.

Test director comes with four specific modules namely:

1. Requirements module
2. Test plan module
3. Test lab module and
4. Defects module

How can we define and view requirements in the test director?

- This is done using the requirements module. 

- In every test management process, specification of the requirements is the first important step. 

- It involves analyzation of the software system or application under test and determination of the requirements of testing that application.

- Requirements analysis somewhat helps in carrying out the coverage analysis. - The following tasks are involved:

1. Addition of new requirements or editing of the previously added ones.
2. Addition and editing of the child requirements.
3. Linking of the requirements to the associated defects.
4. Analyzation of the coverage.

- The requirements analyzation phase follows through the below mentioned steps:

1. Defining the scope: The scope of the requirements includes test goals and objectives and can be determined using the requirements documentation.
2. Creation of the requirements: A requirements tree needs to be built so that all of the testing requirements can be defined.
3. Providing details for the requirements: Detailing involves adding attachments, assigning priority levels to all the requirements if required for testing.
4. Analyzation of the requirements: This phase involves generation of the reports consisting of the graphs to provide an assistance in the analyzation of the testing requirements.

Steps for Defining Requirements

Follow the below mentioned steps for defining the requirements:

1. Launch the test director demo project. You will require to log on to the project if in case the project is not open.
2. Now clicking on the requirements tab will display the requirements module or the requirements tree.
3. One thing that you need to be sure of is that the document view of the requirements is also displayed.
4. Click on the new requirement option which will open the new requirement dialog box. Fill in the details and hit OK.
5. Click new child requirement button for adding a requirement as a lower level of hierarchy.

Steps for Viewing Requirements

For viewing the requirements follow the below mentioned steps:

1. First step is making sure that the requirements module is displayed and if not click on the requirements and turn on the document view of the requirements tree.
2. You can zoom in as well as zoom out of the requirements tree using the zoom in and zoom out buttons.
3. In some cases you may require to view the numeration of requirements. 
4. To view numerations go to view menu and click on the numeration option. If you make any changes in the requirements the same is updated by the test director and numerations are renumbered.